Media’s Effect on an Audience’s Attitude and Behavior

For Monday I read chapter seven Media Influence on Attitudes and Behavior in the book Mass Media and American Politics by Doris Graber. In the chapter, Graber argues how the media has the ability to expose certain political ideologies through “incidental” learning about the political world. She raises a lot of questions throughout the chapter and came to the conclusion that mass media plays a major role in political socialization. However the aspects of political learning varies from different factors including: Psychological, demographic, and news presentation and framing.
People learn through the media the same way they learn through other socialization factors like friends, family, community, and school. These factors, including the media all shape who a person is. Although one factor maybe more important than others to different people, we can’t ignore that they all influence us in some way. For example, when a journalist says a questionable fact it is our job to either accept, ignore, or dispute what they have just presented. We as an audience take in certain images and decide what we want to do with that information. If a person finds what the journalists said to be questionable, he/she may go to other socialization factors such as family or friends to discuss and learn even more about the situation at hand.
Although we have the power to select our information, it is hard to not believe something if it is being presented to you all the time. Journalists have a tendency to dwell on certain facts over and over again. This makes it hard for the audience to question and make their own opinion about the situation at hand because journalists are feeding the same questionable facts over and over again.